


Burning edges and scars and stars

by DanzaNelFuoco



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, or maybe they are but no one wants to deal with it, soulmates are not necessarily romantic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24178471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanzaNelFuoco/pseuds/DanzaNelFuoco
Summary: It’s a matter of minutes, really, so he can’t know if the stain on his wrist has changed as soon as Sebastian has entered this world or if it did only when the contract was signed. It’s not important.His soul belongs to the demon anyway.
Relationships: Elizabeth Midford/Ciel Phantomhive, Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60
Collections: Kuroshitsuji





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Soulmates!Au  
> for the "Ospiti dallo Spazio" Challenge on Kaos Borealis

_“Soulmates aren't the ones who make you happiest, no. They're instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope.”_

_― Victoria Erickson_

“Look, mum!” Elizabeth runs, all white teeth and pink lips, golden hair swaying in the air around her head like a halo, almost angelic in the sunshine.

She trusts her wrist on her mother’s lap, over her embroidery, covering a delicate robin stitched in brown yarn and almost risking to spill blood as the needle grazes her skin.

Her mother purses her lips because this is not an adequate behavior for a lady, but Elizabeth is already talking before she can say anything.

“Look! I’ve got Ciel’s name!”

Francis doesn’t even need a second glance to recognize the black letters on her daughter’s skin. It was to be expected after Ciel got Elizabeth's name on his own two months earlier. Lizzy had just been a late bloomer, and an impatient one - constantly checking if the black blot of her soon to be Soul Mark had already changed to the name of her soulmate. To Francis, those previous two months had been absolutely unbearable, so full of “Mum! When do you think my soul mark would reveal? Mum! Shouldn’t my soul mark already show Ciel’s name? Mum! What if Ciel’s soulmate is another Elizabeth and not me? Mum!”

Yes, Francis would lecture Elizabeth about her unladylike behavior… if only she could bring herself to feel anything else but relief at the moment.

Her frame of mind must be pretty evident on her face, for Rachel chuckles and leans over to look at Elizabeth’s wrist.

“Oh, how cute!” She chirps, pressing a finger on the letters, almost stroking them with fondness. “You really are made for each other, then.”

Lizzy’s smile grows bigger, she’s so bright she outshines the sun. “I will show it to Ciel!” She says and then she is running away even if she shouldn’t be running because it’s unbefitting.

“Thank God for small mercies!” Francis lets out as soon as her daughter is outside of hearing range, leaning against her chair, embroidery completely forgotten.

Rachel smiles, knowingly and hands her a cup of tea, without acknowledging the maid that has just brought it and served it. “Well, at least yours cared about having a soul mark.”

“You know how boys are… they don’t think it’s that important. Not at this age. And Ciel might have not cared, but he surely had bragged about it when his soul mark had spelled Lizzy’s name.”

Rachel purses her lips and hides her face behind the delicate white porcelain cup with blue horses running just under the rim. “It’s not Ciel I’m worried about.”  
“He still hasn’t any name?”

“No. Unfortunately. And he makes a great deal of showing he doesn’t care if he never gets one. My poor boy.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Francis tries to comfort her, “He’ll marry a pretty little girl with a mark like yours and he’ll be happy nonetheless. It’s very fortunate that Ciel and Lizzy are soulmates, but neither of them needs it.”

“I know,” Rachel replies looking at her children, her two beautiful boys, almost indistinguishable in the distance. Lizzy jumps on the spot, excited, her wrist stretched in front of their noses, and Rachel feels her heartbreak a little. “And sometimes I think it’s worse.”

“Worse?”

“Love he can do without. If his wife it’s not his soulmate he’s life could still be good and lovely as was ours, but… Not having anyone in the world that will know you, whose soul will resonate with your own, someone that will know you no matter what, because they’re meant to be the part of you you didn’t know you were lacking… How could my little boy live in this world like this alone? How could anyone?” There is despair in Rachel’s voice.

“It’s too soon to worry. He’s only nine. He’ll get his soul mark soon enough and then it will be running back and forth in the country chasing some Margareth or Jane or Elinor,” Francis pats her forearm, where she knows her name rests in ink-black letters.

“I hope you’re right.” Rachel covers her hand with her own, and look at her best friend - her soulmate - in her eyes.

* * *

Ciel has _that_ look.

The one where his eyes harden and his jaw is set and he looks very much like the adult he will become.

Ciel looks at his brother, at his twin, and makes an oath. “It doesn’t matter what your wrist says, or if it doesn’t say anything at all, we’ll always be together anyway.”

Ciel looks at him with hard eyes and set jaw and solemnity and his twin smiles back, polite and forced, white teeth showing an edge they shouldn’t have - he still has some milk teeth, for heaven’s sake.

“Of course, brother,” he replies and wonders if he managed to sound sincere or not.

_We’ll always be together anyway._

He wants to scoff and snarl and spit at his feet, but he knows that if he allows himself to feel anger - where does all this anger come from, anyway? - he will have a coughing fit and then he will have to be secluded in his chambers for forever. So for how much he can’t withstand Lizzy’s constant babbling on her soul mark, it’s better than spending the evening alone with his throat burning and his chest aching.

So he swallows down the envy and the betrayal and the hurt.

He doesn’t say ‘I’m your twin, I’m your other half, I’m the piece of soul that was taken from you in the womb. My name should be the one written on your skin, not Lizzie’s.’

He doesn’t say and his name isn’t written on anyone’s skin, as if it is not worthy of being remembered.

And his soul mark remains a blotted ink stain on the inside of his wrist that doesn’t spell any letter.

* * *

Mother says that probably it is because his soulmate is not in this world yet. It could be it, no one really knows how soul marks work.

Mother doesn’t understand that he doesn’t care at all. He already knows what name that mark should spell, and it doesn’t.

He thinks he knows better than the universe. Poor fool.

* * *

The absence of a soul mark it’s what helps them distinguishing the two brothers.

“Oh, my,” the man with a mask chuckles. “Poor Elizabeth will be in for a surprise.”

He says it like it's something funny, and the man right beside him laugh, but he knows what this means. He can see it in Ciel's eyes too. 

They are gonna die. 

They are gonna die and nobody is gonna come to save them.

At least Elizabeth would know what had happened - if not how they had died, at least that they had. Uncertainty will never haunt her.

He would laugh, except his throat is too sore and it would end up sounding like madness.

No, Elizabeth would know _Ciel_ is dead. Only Ciel, because her soul mark will turn ash grey and lifeless and her heart will break a little and she will cry because Ciel is gone, but his twin... Well, who ever cared about him?

(Mum did, and Father did and now they are dead.

So that leaves no one.

Well, Ciel cares, even if not enough to have his name written on his wrist. But he can't wonder how much it will take for him to die too.)

He shouldn't be so self-pitying, it's unbefitting of nobility. 

He can't really bring himself to care as they take them both out of the cage.

"Which one first?"

"The firstborn, of course."

"Of course," the man grins, "Elizabeth's."

He can't do anything but watch as his brother gets taken away from him.

* * *

It’s a matter of minutes, really, so he can’t know if the stain on his wrist has changed as soon as Sebastian has entered this world or if it did only when the contract was signed. It’s not important.

His soul belongs to the demon anyway.

* * *

The name on Elizabeth's wrist is marred.

She can't stand to look at it.

It hasn't turned gray as they told her it would, it's still black, even if not as shiny and full of life as before, but it's canceled, blacker lines are drawn on it as if someone had tried to eliminate a mistake.

She would just love to tear the skin apart and forget about soulmates at all. But the scar would only remind her of the name it was once written there, so there is not really an easy solution to the pain.

Lizzy would really like to be able to throw a tantrum and yell that she wants her Ciel back, alive and whole, but she knows that even if she does - even if she allows herself to cry and shout and bang her fist against the table - Ciel is not gonna come back.

Ciel is lost.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth," Lord Phantomhive says, closing the only eye he has left. "Soul marks are known to change if the soul of a person changes. It’s not common, but not unheard of. I can't be the person I was before, even if I try."

Elizabeth wants to scream that he could _try_ at least, instead of giving up like that. She wants to shout in his face that if he doesn't even tell her what happened, how can she help him? And what even happened to change his soul so deeply he's no longer her soulmate?

She doesn't dare to ask, not again - she has seen the anger and the rage in his eye the first time she did, and it scared her. Enough to understand that the person in front of her is not her Ciel.

"I am so, so sorry," He says and he shows her his wrist, all broken lines that once were her name 

(they never were her name, they’re their own alphabet, writing a name no human being can pronounce).

"I'm gonna marry you nonetheless, of course."

"Of course," Elizabeth says because her mother told her. One did not marry for love, one did not marry for destiny. Marriages were a thing, and soulmates were another. She was just very lucky that for her they coincided. Or they had, at least until the fire.

So, yes, she knew she would have married Ciel anyway, but it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. 

Because as Rachel once said - not that Elizabeth was there to listen to her -'Not having anyone in the world that will know you, whose soul will resonate with your own, someone that will know you no matter what, because they’re meant to be the part of you you didn’t know you were lacking… How could anyone live in this world like that, alone?'

Elizabeth doesn't know, but she'll have to figure out because her soulmate is dead even if his body is still alive.

(Not once - not once does she think: this isn’t the real Ciel. 

Because if anyone, only Ciel would have survived.)

* * *

Sebastian checks the temperature of the water and starts to undress him.

The jacket, then the trousers, then the tie. The last thing to go is the shirt and Sebastian always has to force his laughter down when he sees his dinner's forearm.

Oh, the irony. He had told the boy he would have to wear a sign of their contract, the more visible the more powerful and the boy had sacrificed his eye, but this... oh, joy, another mark. 

The little Lord Phantomhive has his name - his demonic name, written in an alphabet no human should have ever seen- on his skin.

The boy can't find any loophole, now. He's his. Guaranteed by the destiny itself.

"Why are you always looking at my soul mark, Sebastian?" The boy asks and the demon can't lie so he replies the truth.

"Because it's been a long time since I've seen my name written anywhere."

The boy's eyes widen, the pentagram on his pupil enlarging along. "Your - your name?"

Sebastian takes his hand in his own, slides a finger over his wrist, the long black nail grazing the delicate pale skin as it follows the path of a blue vein. He could slit his arteries open without so much as a little pressure. But now it's not the time. 

Sebastian smiles and pronounces the letters, a guttural sound that could be mistaken for the howl of a dying animal. "My true name, not the one you gave me, young master."

The boy could offer to learn it, he could offer to try to replicate it, but he doesn't. 

For one thing, he doesn't think anything that hoarse could exit his throat, not ever and surely not before puberty.

"You are my soulmate," he says instead.

"Soulmate," chuckles Sebastian, gently releasing his hand, "ah, yes, your soul his mine, young master."

"But you don't love me. And surely I don’t love you." He almost sounds offended.

He doesn't say what he thinks, that it could be so easy to believe that lie, that the demon really cares for him and isn't just there to eat him at the end of the deal. It helped him to remember himself that the... _noise_ that is Sebastian's real name, sounded like pure crystallized pain.

"Oh, love has nothing to do with soulmates," the demon says because he can't lie. He is already past cursing that clause, even though lying to the boy would have been so much easier. Yes, let him believe the demonic creature from Hell has developed a heart. Maybe he could have got to feast on him sooner.

But the fear he's smelling is good too, so he can't really complain.

"Soulmates are about... souls. You get the name of the only person that can understand you, that knows your soul as if it's their own," Sebastian brushes the soap on his chest, leaning to him. "Of course, it would be me. I am the only one who sees you as you really are, how rotten your soul is, how dark and spoilt by revenge and hate and anger...and I still accept it. Actually I love how dark it is. It would only be more delicious when I’ll feast on you."

The boy shivers as the demon rinses him of the foam. 

"Does it mean you have my name written somewhere on your skin?"

Sebastian laughs.

"You can't really believe, I have all the names of the people who signed a deal with me on my skin, can you? I would have run out of space centuries ago."

The boy purses his lips, "There's no need to be patronizing, Sebastian."

"I apologize, my lord."

* * *

They run because this is what they have to do when the real Ciel Phantomhive cames back.

The boy and the demon - and the maid and the cook and the gardener.

Tanaka doesn't go with them, but they weren't really expecting him to. 

Neither does Lizzy, and it doesn't hurt to see her at his brother's side as she always was, it doesn't.

It doesn't hurt the blank expression on her face, either, as if she was hiding the betrayal under that doll mask, the 'I really thought you were Ciel, why did you lie to me?'

He would have liked to reply that 'this is why. Because you wouldn't have accepted me otherwise, none of you would have wanted anything less than Ciel the perfect heir. What would you have done with me? What would you have done with the poor asthmatic boy, always ill, always unsuited?'

Those are things they don't say to each other. Never to be uttered, never to be explained.

In the end, there is a reason if his soul mark doesn't spell Elizabeth's name. 

In the end, it's the boy and the demon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Elizabeth, dear, your soul mark has turned grey." 
> 
> Elizabeth purses her lips, trying to force them in a smile. "Yes, _Ciel_. Now I'm just as miserable as you are." 
> 
> "No, Lizzy, you are not. You are not even close," his face doesn't move, not a wince, not a grimace, not even a grin. His tone is just condescending. "But I'm not planning to make you so. That's just how fortunate you are."

Elizabeth knows this isn’t Ciel - her Ciel - not even this one, for the name on her wrist stays greyish and marred and shady.

Elizabeth knows this person… this… this… this _thing_ isn’t Ciel, and yet his body is. This pale imitation, alive just because of blood. 

But what is she to do?

This is her real soulmate. This is the real Ciel - not the other, not the liar.

Except, this is a lie too. 

It's just so painful and unfair and it shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't be brother against brother, and murders, and paranormal beings fighting and resurrecting the dead.

Elizabeth wonders if, after all, it wouldn't have been better if both boys had stayed dead in the fire.

* * *

Ciel Phantomhive doesn't die, he just dissolves under the lack of blood, decaying day after day, rotting like the dead body he is, even if the green-eyed man with a desperate craziness in his smile that was at his back the whole time - the Undertaker - tries all he has to save him.

Elizabeth watches him doing so and then the Lord Phantomhive is back - no longer charged with murder - to cover it up. It wouldn't do to leave the Queen without a watchdog and the impostor twin doesn't wait for a second invitation to take the manor back.

After all, when the Queen calls, one has to answer.

So he goes back and he gets to be called Ciel again because actually, it was all a rouse, the boy who claimed to be the real Earl was just an impersonator maneuvered by political enemies of the monarchy and he was the rightful one all along. Or so the newspapers say.

Elizabeth doesn’t believe it for a single second.

But Elizabeth can't very well go the Queen and tell her she should just destroy the whole Phantomhive household. That's preposterous.

Her mother shakes her head and tells her if the Queen says that one is Ciel Phantohive, the legitimate Earl, then that one _is_ Ciel Phantomhive, the legitimate Earl. Her Majesty knows better - or, Elizabeth thinks, she simply doesn't care as long as nobility's dirty little secrets are kept just like that, secret.

So Elizabeth smiles and looks pretty and plays pretend. "Yes, _Ciel_. Of course, _Ciel_."

It hurts her throat. He's an impostor, he's the younger brother and it doesn't matter that Ciel is dead and he would be there nonetheless. 

He lied.

He let her hope she could have her soulmate back.

He deceived her and now that he's back he wants to be called Ciel again as if nothing had really happened.

She doesn't ask if she's still supposed to marry him. 

She's afraid she'll try to kill him on their wedding night.

* * *

If he should be honest, he could have gone back with his real name. There was no need in the first place to actually be Ciel Phantomhive when he could have been himself - except for the fact that anyone would have preferred Ciel to survive if one of them was to die. 

So he had just given them what they wanted.

No one had complained back then.

But now... now it's just pettiness. He knows they know and they have to pretend they don't and he can see it in Elizabeth's eyes - oh, she thinks she's so good, but he can see it, the spite, the slight inflection every time she calls him _Ciel_.

Once he would have done everything in the world to spare her pain - she's his family, he loved her, he cared about her, even when he resented her and Ciel and their soul marks. He would have never hurt her.

Now there's the not negligible fact that she didn't even give him the benefit of the doubt. She decided that the undead puppet pulled by Undertaker's hands was the real Ciel and she didn't even stop to consider if it was worth it.

A dead body was still better than him.

"Elizabeth, dear, your soul mark has turned grey."

Elizabeth purses her lips, trying to force them in a smile. "Yes, _Ciel_. Now I'm just as miserable as you are."

"No, Lizzy, you are not. You are not even close," his face doesn't move, not a wince, not a grimace, not even a grin. His tone is just condescending. "But I'm not planning to make you so. That's just how fortunate you are."

He cannot forgive her, as she cannot forgive him, but that doesn't mean he really wants her to suffer and be so desperate to deal with the devil.

Bowing politely at his side, Sebastian hides a grin as he pours them tea.

* * *

Her mother stamps down her foot and says she won't allow the marriage until Elizabeth reaches at least her twenties.

It’s weird how she has stopped being so intimidating, almost sensing that he doesn’t fear her judgment anymore since the whole 'real Ciel came back from the dead’ debacle.

What has he to demonstrate? He’s no longer playing a part.

What can Francis Midford do to him that his undead twin could not, that the dark cult that kidnapped them could not? Annul the marriage with Elizabeth?

He is past caring, really.

He’ll need a wife eventually, to be part of society, but he doesn’t really need her to be Lizzy. Maybe it would even be better if he manages to marry someone who doesn't hate him.

But he was always nostalgic, so “yes, fine, whatever, we’ll marry when Elizabeth will be twenty-one, here, better?”

Francis Midford hardens her gaze and he doesn’t recoil. He’s fourteen now, not even close to a man, but he has stopped being a child the night his parents were killed. And more than a year in the hiding does things to a person.

“Don’t be condescending with me, boy.”

“I gave you what you came to ask of me, that we didn’t marry as soon as law consented it. You can marry her to someone else, I won’t object.”

Francis is tempted, so tempted - but the scandal it would cause would be abysmal. After all that happened the Phantomhive household doesn’t need any more publicity, they’re supposed to work in the shadows.

“Now, young master, if I may say so, you are acting too harshly again," Sebastian places a hand on the Earl's shoulder as to contain a rage he doesn't show. "I'm sure you're not trying to be impolite to Mrs. Midford, but pursuing this line of conversation will probably bring a fracture between the two families and Lady Elizabeth is still your cousin, besides being your betrothed."

Francis knows the butler is right, she knows he's working to her favor, but she can't help disliking him. She always did, since the first time Ciel - no, not Ciel, the other twin - came back from the dead with a patch on his eye and that servant behind his back. 

There's something wrong in the man, she doesn't quite get what it is - it's just a hunch but she trusts her instinct. It's almost like he's too perfect to be true, too artificial.

The Earl shakes his head, and the butler retires his hand. "You are right, Sebastian," he says and his voice is tight. "I apologize, Mrs. Midford. I was merely saying that if you wish to break the engagement to a better match for Elizabeth, I won't interfere. Her happiness is of the utmost importance to me."

Francis hates hiding behind falsities, hates all these half-truths, and embellished pretending - she's a Phantomhive to the core, she was used to the harsh and blunt truth of nobility's deviances and perversities for her and her brother were the ones that had to cover them up and sugarcoat them. _She_ was the one that told the lies and weaved the treads into an acceptable story for the public and now she has been thrown out of the fulcrum and relegated with the sheep that need to believe everything the newspaper says it's true. 

She hates it.

She hates it, but there's nothing she can do.

They have passed the torch to the new generation - she by marring and Vincent by dying.

“I’m sure it is," she says instead and she nods curtly; the veiled menace in her tone -the 'make sure her happiness _is_ of the utmost importance to you, or _else_...' - doesn't get wasted.

Sebastian would laugh - damn, even the boy needs to suppress a grin - because she's cute, she really thinks she can do _something_ to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's gonna be at least another chapter of this.
> 
> (I don't know why there's the first chapter ending note down there ↓ and how to delete it just from chapter two, sorry!)

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I just wanted a dark soulmates!Au with these two, and I ended up with more Lizzy and Francis than I had expected. 
> 
> I was gonna post it as a one-shot, but then I decided to split it in two, since the second part is gonna deal with events that are not yet in the manga, and I'm a little bit unsure on how I'm writing that part.  
> So, you can stop here, the fic is gonna make sense anyway, I suppose, it's just gonna be a lot about introspection, instead of "romance" (I'm not sure this is the right word for this pairing in this fic). 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
